Hero of the Emeralds
by mdalkirk
Summary: It's been a year since the incident with Eggman in San Francisco, and Sonic has been settling into his new life with friends on Earth. Elsewhere, Mobius is facing destruction and the people need the Chaos Emeralds in the hands of a hero to save it. Tails has tracked down the person he believes can be that hero, and travels to Earth to find him. Sequel to Sonic 2020 movie
1. Finding the Hero

Tails waited until night fell to sneak into the professor's laboratory. He was allowed to help out there and put together gadgets, including the tracker he was about to steal. It had activated several times over a few days, emitting an energy signal stronger than anything that had been observed so far, but they were always short-lived only active few seconds. Several months passed, and it remained dormant. It was dismissed as a malfunction, the zone it was coming from was not even advanced. There was no reason a person able to activate the Chaos Emeralds would be there. Efforts were refocused on pursuing more likely leads, and no matter how much Tails insisted his tracker found the one they were looking for, nobody listened.

Normally, Tails wouldn't have had the courage to do something like this. Breaking the rules and going off on his own with a Power Ring to a new world was dangerous. But things were getting dire on Mobius.

Tails picked up the tracker and heard footsteps upstairs making their way towards the stairway leading to the lab.

A voice called out, "Tails? Is that you down there?"

Panicking, he threw his Power Ring and thought of the zone he tracked the signal to months ago. The ring rapidly expanded, revealing a beautiful green landscape on the other side. There was no time to second guess if this was the right place, and he stepped through.

* * *

"Woohoo!" Sonic yelled out as he ran down the highway, dodging through cars and leaving only a blue bur behind him. He screeched to a halt in front of Tom's cop car, stationed at its usual spot.

"Ice cream delivery!" Sonic said, excitedly extending his arms towards Tom who still sitting in the car.

"I think you forgot the ice cream," Tom said nodding toward the pair of mostly empty sugar cones in Sonic's gloved hands.

Tom was certain there were a couple of scoops melting in the sun right outside _Ice Paradise_. Again.

"Oops, guess I went a little too fast…they gave me a new flavor today, too." Sonic said, sounding depressed.

"That's okay buddy, I like the cones too," and he took one of the cones.

Sonic's expression reverted to excited wonder almost instantly and he popped one of the cones in its entirety into his mouth.

"Sonic, be careful not to go so fast you use your powers. Robotnik might be gone, but you don't want to go drawing attention from the government again by knocking satellites out of the sky."

"I know, I know. Don't worry, I haven't used them since we sent Eggman packing!" Sonic whined, "Besides the Prez loves me"

Tom shook his head, it had been a whirlwind of a week when the President had visited Green Hills to meet Sonic. It had been part of the deal to keep quiet about the whole incident a year ago.

"What about the people who chased you before you came here? We don't want them showing up on Earth. Robotnik was bad enough, but he was just another human. Who was after you before, anyway? You've never talked about them."

Sonic suddenly looked anxious. Sounding unsure he said, "Green Hills is so far away, there's no way they'd find me….Okay, I'm off! See you at home!" and Sonic dashed away to finish his daily routine.

* * *

Tails flew high above the trees, eyeing the device which had begun to track a faint signal. He knew it! Now that he was actually in the Zone he was able to pick it up even when it was weak. Scanning the landscape, he saw a wind blast through the trees in a thin line. A blue shape emerged from the forest out onto a large diamond-shaped field. It then ran along the edge of the diamond in irregular patterns.

He landed far away enough that he hoped he wouldn't be seen. Could this be the Hero they were looking for? He crawled up behind a bush and peeked over.

There seemed to be several people in the field, but never at the same time. Every time he blinked one of them showed up in a new spot. He scrunched up his face, trying to concentrate on the figures. He realized it was just one hedgehog moving very fast between the small white bumps on the ground, throwing a ball to itself. It was the fastest person Tails had ever seen, maybe the fastest thing alive.

Tails barely noticed that the tracker was beeping more loudly now that he had gotten closer. It must have been loud enough for the hedgehog to hear because he stopped and looked over in his direction.

"Who's there?" the hedgehog called out.

Tails shrank behind the hedge, too scared to move. The wind rushed into his ears for a moment and stopped. He gulped and looked up slowly.

The hedgehog was smiling and asked, "Whatcha doin' down there buddy?"

End of Chapter 1


	2. Crossroads

"Eep!" Tails yelled out, stumbling backward from the bush.

"Woah, calm down I didn't mean to scare ya," the blue hedgehog said. "My name is Sonic. Who're you?"

"I'm Tails," the little fox managed to get out.

The tracker was beeping louder than ever with Sonic standing right next to it.

"What's that all about?" He asked, crouching next to tails in an instant, looking at the tracker on the ground a few feet away.

Tails wordlessly opened his mouth at the sudden appearance of the hedgehog next to him and looked utterly uncomfortable. He hurriedly crawled away from Sonic and over to the tracker, picking it up. He rotated some dials, pressed a few buttons, and then it finally went quiet. "It— I was looking for you! I think. Maybe. You have to come with me back home." The fox looked at him expectantly, his breathing calming down slightly.

Memories from his old life returned — Longclaw warning him of people who were hunting him down for his powers. She died protecting him from people like that. Protecting his secret, so he could be safe. So he could be alone. This fox wasn't from earth, but he didn't seem like the hunters from his old nightmares.

"Sorry buddy, I can't go back with you. But hey, I bet we can have a lot of fun together around here instead. Come on, I'll show you!" Before Tails could respond, sonic grabbed his hand and ran off, dragging him in the air behind him.

* * *

"Aaaaaaa—" Tails was screaming as he was dragged at an unreal speed. They stopped just a few seconds after they began, but were in an entirely new place. It was a small room with a ton of toys and random knick-knacks scattered around. There was a large red bean bag in the center of the floor and posters plastered to the wall sloppily with some tape. Tails hadn't seen so many fun looking things in a while, and he forgot about his mission. They spent the rest of the afternoon playing with all the stuff in the room.

Sonic was rolled up in a ball and bouncing on a small trampoline when a door opened downstairs.

He sprang back into standing form and said, "Oh! Tom's back. Come on, you gotta meet him!"

Tails put down what Sonic had told him was a helicopter and timidly followed him down the attic stairs. He felt silly and ashamed for letting himself get caught up playing with toys when everyone was doing their best to help Mobius back home.

"Tom!", Sonic ran ahead of Tails and jumped up and hugged the large Earth man. "What took you so long?" He whined.

"Sonic, This is the time I always get home during the week. You're just bored because Maddie has been working late and hasn't been able to play with — who is that?" He was staring at Tails.

"Oh! This is Tails. He's a new friend. Right, Tails?"

"Oh.. um… I…" Tails slowly hid most of his body behind the doorway to the living room. He wasn't sure what to do in this situation. Normally, you weren't supposed to visit planets outside of the Power Ring network. There were a lot of worlds that freely traveled between themselves, but Earth was far from all of them. He probably was breaking some kind of rule by letting one of the people from this world see him. The Professor would definitely scold him if he ever found out.

Tom turned his gaze to Tails but spoke to Sonic, "So… Is he from where you're from? He looks kind of like you. In an alien fox sort of way. Wait, does he have two tails?!"

Tails instinctively hid his tails behind himself.

Sonic rushed over and brought Tails out into the open with him, hand resting on his shoulder. "He's from — uh... Oops, I guess I never asked. Where are you from, Tails?"

"I-I'm from Mobius. Please, you have to help me."

Sonic recognized the name immediately. Mobius was the same place he and Longclaw had lived together. He never knew there were people like Tails who lived there too. Maybe they lived on a different island.

But he wasn't supposed to go back there.

"Are you in some kind of trouble? Do you need one of those rings to get back home?" Tom asked.

"N-no I still have a ring left." he looked at Sonic. "Please, you have to come home with me. You're the only one who can help us"

"It's because of his powers, isn't it?" Tom said. "But Sonic is just a kid… what exactly is going on in your world?"

Tails wasn't sure where to begin. Sonic seemed to trust Tom, so maybe it was okay to talk about it in front of him.

"Mobius has been falling apart slowly for years… ever since the Master Emerald was broken. Land fell out of the sky, and holes opened up in the ground and swallowed the King's castle. The weather has gotten all crazy so it's not safe to go to a lot of places anymore. Most people have left already with the Power Rings, but some of us stay to try and figure out how to fix the Emerald. Like the Professor!" Tails was rambling, hoping he was making sense and continued, "If we can just do that, everything will go back to normal."

Sonic's mouth was hanging open, "Wow, that sounds awful Tails! But what can I do?"

"W-well, the Professor thinks if we can find the Chaos Emeralds, we can fix the Master Emerald. But, they don't emit any energy anymore." Tails pulled out his tracker and turned it back on, the beeping resuming.

"A year ago, there was a strong energy signal and we were able to see the signatures of some of the emeralds while it was active. But it only lasted a few minutes and we lost track of them again."

Tails sounded more confident as he dived into more technical details "I was able to isolate and profile the original signal. It came from somewhere really far away, here on Earth. I thought if I could just get close enough I'd be able to pick it up again and we could find the source. But not even the Professor believed me, he thought it wasn't worth using a power ring." Tails felt guilty, grasping a single power ring in his hand.

"You think I'm making that thing go haywire, and I can somehow find these Emeralds if I go back with you to Mobius?" Sonic popped in front of tails and poked the tracker display. It beeped even more rapidly.

Sonic crossed his arms and looked deep in thought for a moment. "Okay, if I'm able to help I will— "

"Woah — Wait a second Sonic, let's think about this." Tom interrupted, "It seemed like Robotnik was able to use your quills to do some crazy stuff with his robots, it's not really clear what the extent of your powers are. You came here to hide if you go to this place, won't you be in danger?"

"Please, Sonic, you have to help us. This is life or death, you're the only hope we have," Tails pleaded.

Tom started to object again, but his mind was already made up.

"I'm going."


End file.
